Summary
Painful secrets are exposed in an episode with excellent, empathetic character development.
This recap of Heartbreak High (2022) season 1, episode 2, “Renaissance T*****s”, contains spoilers.
READ: Our spoiler-free season review.
It’s the morning after the night before, and while Amerie still hasn’t shaken off her nickname, at least she has something to smile about. After her kiss with Dusty the previous night, she’s pretty pleased with herself, and only more so when he invites her to a concert he’s throwing at his dad’s house for his band (the working name is Chronic Fatigue). Of course, Amerie has no idea at the moment that Dusty went home with Harper, but we’ll get there.
The trouble with Dusty’s concert is that it’s invite-only and requires a slap-on wristband, and Spider is the one giving them out. Since Spider isn’t exactly Amerie’s biggest fan, “Renaissance T*****s” largely revolves around her trying to finesse one by other means.
Heartbreak High (2022) season 1, episode 2 recap
At the end of the previous episode, we saw a new version of the incest map that exposed Dusty’s liaison with Harper, and it’s Quinni who discovers it under a table in the latest SLTs class. She and Darren decide not to tell Amerie about it, though, while Jojo continues to clash with Woodsy over the curriculum. Pretending the kids aren’t having sex isn’t going to work since they’re already having sex anyway, and the dated informational films aren’t teaching anyone anything.
Of course, a lot of romance is figuring things out for oneself, which is exactly what Quinni does with Sasha. She finally plucks up the courage to ask her out and, after some tormenting and silliness from Darren and Amerie, she gets an answer in the affirmative. It’s a cute scene and Quinni is quickly becoming my favorite character. The date, though, is awkward, as we see Quinni clam up and fail to focus, driven to distraction by the noise and the crowds. It’s quite obvious that she’s autistic — my eldest daughter is and behaves exactly the same in busy spaces — but this won’t be raised until later.
Anyway, things aren’t going well for Amerie. After spotting Harper sporting some suspicious-looking bruises, she tries and fails to get SLTs canceled, only earning herself more ire in the process, and when she shows up at Dusty’s concert she can’t get in through the front door. Instead, Malakai helps her over the back wall and she falls straight into the pool. Even her potentially romantic moment with Dusty is cut short when he’s called onstage to perform.
The highlight of the party is Darren staying in the bathroom with Quinni until she calms down after her date, and then Quinni explaining to Sasha that she behaved that way because she’s autistic. Sasha takes it really well, apologizes for not realizing — Quinni explains she’s very good at masking it — and the two of them kiss. The lowlight is Dusty dedicating the band’s song to Harper, which tips Amerie off to something happening between them. Amerie doesn’t stick around for the rest of the Renaissance T*****s gig — a reference to a gag from earlier in the episode — and instead accuses Harper of deliberately going after her crush to hurt her. She spends the evening with Malakai, platonically — at least for now.
It’s worth mentioning though that Harper is clearly suffering after some kind of trauma. Between the bruises spotted earlier, and a throwaway line about how she didn’t really “have much choice” about hooking up with Dusty, something bad has clearly happened to her which subsequent episodes will surely reveal.
At the end of the episode, Ca$h and his friends steal Dusty’s dad’s car.
